Mars Finance Crypto Daily | 15th Anniversary of Bitcoin, Radiant Capital Loses $4.5 Million in Attack

Mars Crypto Daily January 3, 2024

1. Today's news

The platform contract price for "SEC through Bitcoin ETF by January 15" is 0.89 cents, meaning traders believe the probability of passing is 89%, compared to 50% last month, according to Polymarket data.

According to DefiLlama data, the total market value of the current stablecoin is $131.106 billion, of which the USDT market value is $91.957 billion, with a market share of 70.26%.

Solscan, a blockchain explorer and data analytics platform for the Solana ecosystem, has announced that it has been officially acquired by block explorer Etherscan. In addition, Solscan says it will continue to optimize and integrate additional features to enhance the user experience with the assistance of Etherscan.

According to Coinglass data, the open interest in bitcoin futures contracts across the network is 449,240 BTC (about $20.36 billion). Among them, the open interest of CME bitcoin contract is 125,960 BTC (about 5.7 billion US dollars), ranking first, and the open position of Binance bitcoin contract is 104,400 BTC (about 4.73 billion US dollars), ranking second.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said that while he and ETF analyst James Seyffart still believe there is a 90% chance that a Bitcoin spot ETF will be approved by Jan. 10, they have not raised that probability above that number.

Although unlikely, the rejection of spot bitcoin ETFs this month is likely due to the SEC's desire for "more time" rather than outright rejection. Because the time and effort invested by the SEC and Bitcoin ETF issuers means that Bitcoin ETFs are unlikely to be rejected outright at the last minute. If the SEC refuses, the fund issuer may follow in Grayscale's footsteps and file a separate lawsuit against the regulator.

It's been 15 years since Satoshi Nakamoto mined Block #0, Bitcoin's genesis block, on January 3, 2009, in a small server in Helsinki, Finland.

Satoshi Nakamoto recorded the day's front-page headline for The Times in the CoinBase data for the genesis block: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." There is only one transaction in the block, and the block reward is 50 BTC.

According to CoinGecko data, the price of Bitcoin was $45,274 at the time of writing, with a market capitalization of over $889.4 billion.

On January 3, Radiant Capital, a multi-chain lending protocol, officially stated that it had received a report of issues with the protocol's newly created native USDC marketplace in Arbitrum, and that the Radiant DAO Council temporarily suspended the lending marketplace on Arbitrum in order to further investigate the matter after being verified by Radiant developers and the broader Web 3 security community. Radiant Capital said that no funds are currently at risk.

On January 3, UniSat posted, "We are sorry that we have to postpone the development of other tasks at hand to ensure that the Ordinals Jubilee upgrade for the BRC-20 proceeds as scheduled. For us, the schedule was tight. But we will do everything to prevent the BRC-20 from splitting with the Ordinals. 」

BRC20 founder Domo retweeted UniSat's posting that it would comply with the Jubilee upgrade, saying: "Given the serious consequences and valuations involved, I believe that the hasty rollout of these BRC20 updates is reckless, ignores their peer indexers, and could harm the overall interests of the BRC20 user community." The 0.8/0.9 incident highlighted the complexity of integrating new updates into the BRC20 standard, and while I was eager to implement protocol improvements, it was clear that these changes might not be secure without the robust testing, coordination, and validation infrastructure being built.

In addition, the timing and pending incentive structure suggest that this is not just a one-time technology-driven action by Unisat, but part of its thoughtful, ongoing strategy to take control of the protocol. "L1Fxyz, a non-profit foundation dedicated to ensuring that the BRC20 standard is free from the control of centralized enterprises, is currently maintaining an indexer with the express intent of ensuring the security of all funds in BRC20 assets," Domo further stated. Together, we implore the entire BRC20 community to reject Unisat's proposed fork and support a not-for-profit, security-first approach to upholding the protocol. ”

Previously, UniSat issued a document on the X platform that it will follow the Ordinals Jubilee (Jubilee) upgrade to ensure that the BRC-20 is still running on Ordinals and not split into a separate protocol. In addition, UniSat announced that the white paper will be released on January 31.

According to a report published by Matrixport, it believes that all current spot Bitcoin ETF applications fail to meet one key requirement, so it expects the SEC to reject all proposals in January, which could materialize in the second quarter of 2024. Since the approval of traders to start betting on ETFs in September 2023, at least $14 billion in additional fiat and leverage has been deployed into the crypto space.

Some of these flows may be related to the easing of macro conditions, as the Fed has turned dovish. However, of the $14 billion in additional long positions, $10 billion may be related to the ETF approval expectations. If the SEC refuses to approve the ETF, there will be a mass liquidation in the market, and it is expected that most of the $5.1 billion long position will be unwound, and the price of bitcoin could quickly fall by 20% and fall back to the $36,000/$38,000 range. Even so, Matrix on Target expects bitcoin to remain above $42,000 at the beginning of 2024 by the end of 2024, even if the SEC vetoes the ETF.

Data released by on-chain analyst Ali on the X platform shows that in the past 10 days, Bitcoin miners have sold about 4,000 BTC, totaling more than $176 million.

Adam, a Greeks.live macro researcher, said in an article on the X platform: "As time goes by, the probability of ETF passage this week is getting lower and lower, and there is a stalemate in the market. The weakness of crypto mining stocks, as well as the sell-off of several crypto-related US stocks, also strengthened the market's doubts. Weekly at-the-money options IV plummeted to 52%, and at-the-money options expiring on January 12 also fell below 65%, returning to the year-end average. At present, put options are relatively cheap in the current month, and large transactions have begun to actively buy puts, and the options market data shows that institutional investors are not very optimistic about the ETF market. ”

The Starknet Governance Committee has initiated a proposal in the Governance Hub to activate the Alpha V0.13.0 upgrade on mainnet, with voting starting on January 4 at 12:00 UTC (20:00 UTC) and continuing until January 8 at 12:00 UTC (20:00 UTC).

Previously, Starknet had announced in the community that it planned to carry out the V0.13.0 upgrade on January 22, the main content of the upgrade is to add the V3 transaction type, the purpose of which is to allow the Starknet network to support some future feature upgrades, such as adding STRK as a gas token in addition to ETH.

The Wall Street Journal reported late last month that Ho has broad control over Binance's marketing and investment divisions. People familiar with the board's hiring process said Ho used her influence in electing Binance's new independent majority-owned board. People with knowledge of the exchange's finances said she holds at least 10 percent of Binance's Cayman Islands holding. In early settlement discussions, the Justice Department had hoped that Ho would leave, but it was unclear why that was ultimately not achieved, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

According to Paishield monitoring, the multi-chain lending protocol Radiant Capital lost 1,900 ETH ($4.5 million) due to a hack. According to the analysis, the hackers basically took advantage of the window in which a new market in the lending market (derived from Compound/Aave) was activated. The vulnerability also relies on a known rounding issue in the current Compound/Aave codebase.

Earlier today, Radiant Capital officially posted on the X platform that the community reported that there are problems with Radiant's newly created native USDC market on Arbitrum, and after verification by Radiant developers and the broader Web3 security community, Radiant DAO has suspended the lending market on Arbitrum, and is further investigating the problem, and no funds are currently at risk.

DeFiLlama data shows that Arbitrum TVL is currently $2.564 billion, an increase of more than $800 million since October last year. In addition, the top five TVLs of its ecosystem protocols are as follows: - GMX TVL was $566 million, a one-day increase of 8.1%; - Uniswap V3 TVL was $280 million, a one-day increase of 12.37%; - AAVE V3 TVL was $278 million, a one-day increase of 17.08%; - Radiant TVL was $166.4 million, down 13.5% in a single day; - Balancer V2 TVL was $155 million, a one-day increase of 21.99%.

2. Selected articles

The ARB price broke through $1.94, a 24-hour increase of 10.33%, and was worth more than $20 billion, making it the largest L2 rollup. EIP-4844 will improve Ethereum L1+L2 performance and reduce transaction fees, Metis and ZKFair have also launched solutions, Starknet mainnet is launched, Particle launches Taiko Alpha-6 testnet, MantaManta public chain raises $60 million in funds, and New Paradigm liquidity incentive campaign is launched.

ERC-6551 is a new NFT proposal that eliminates the need for a centralized company, and can support the seamless transfer of assets such as NFTs, ERC20, ERC1155, POAPs, and more, as well as the transparency of pricing mechanisms, and can also support social protocols, brand campaigns, and more, in the hope that it will bring more changes.

Q4 global crypto market financing events and financing amount increased overall, the number of financings was 243, the total amount of financing has been disclosed to be 2.379 billion US dollars, infrastructure and applications are still the focus of institutional investment, and the popularity of the DePIN sector has promoted DeFi and CeFi to become an important area for capital layout. Among the top 10 projects are Wormhole, LINENEXT, Arkon Energy, etc., OKX Ventures, Hashkey Capital and Waterdrip Capital have become the institutions with the most shots in Q4, and well-known institutions are biased towards underlying facilities and DeFi tracks.

In 2024, the Crypto™ market will see a bullish trend, focusing on 6 investment themes, including LRTs, EigenLayer contracts, Airdrop Wave, Puffer, and Swell. Solana's SOL entered the top five crypto assets, and the DA war began, with TIA and FDV valuing at $2 billion and $14 billion, respectively. Alameda is starting a zero-risk Bitcoin arbitrage and should make the most of illiquid shitcoins and sell safe-haven positions.

The BRC-20 protocol upgrade has sparked disagreements, with domo, Best in Slot, and UniSat among others expressing different attitudes, with TRAC founder Benny remaining neutral. The upgrade may result in the BRC-20 protocol running two sets of rules on the same chain, but the future of BRC-20 will be brighter after proper discussions and a result that everyone agrees on.

3. Project interpretation

20 projects launched points or reward systems to incentivize user participation and increase retention and loyalty. friend.tech launched Web3 social platforms, Scallop, Grass, Rainbow and other companies launched airdrop point activities, and Markets, marginfi, Tensor and other strategies such as deposits, loans, and referrals, and users can obtain points and rewards according to their activity.

Sei Network raised $50 million in this round of financing, and Binance listed SEI/BTC, SEI/USDT, SEI/BNB trading markets, and the SEI price rose to $0.8 on January 2, an increase of 230%. Sei Labs has launched its first parallel EVM solution, Yaka Finance is about to go live, Kryptonite is a decentralized AMM and staking protocol based on Sei, Bankless has put parallel EVM on its 2024 watchlist, and new public chains such as Sei, Celestia, and Sui are on the rise.